Hello, Merty here :) Wooo it was brilliant to see this featured, as myself and Dorlir made this several months ago and were very proud of this one. It is always a fun experience collabing with Dorlir - as he mentioned in his comments. We do both have quite distinct styles (he's more likely to focus on minimalism and economy of clues, and I quite often will enjoy putting themes and aesthetics in mine, and sometimes even extra clues if I feel they make it more fun, perhaps at the expense of elegant minimalism), but even despite that, we in fact have a very similar approach to setting and especially the kinds of logic and deductions that please us. Dorlir's puzzles are naturally sometimes more mathsy and brutal than mine, but he also has a big passion for geometry style puzzles, yin-yang, loops, snakes etc, and it's here where we overlap a lot. Dorlir is one of the most creative and innovative minds in the sudoku world right now. While his grids aren't usually very showy or flashy at first glance, they are always packed with so much cool intricate genius logic, and usually based around a new and clever logical core concept. It seems like several times a week he's telling me about a new idea he's had for a puzzle, and they're always different and fresh. One day back in March, Dorlir mentioned a core idea to me... the idea of two galaxies, combined with yin yang, and he showed me the opening deduction that would be forced - with the perimeter all one colour, and the inner corners and the middle cell coloured the other colour. I thought this was a brilliant opening, and from there we talked about what clues and rules we could have that could satisfyingly fill the grid. I think it was Dorlir's idea to make one of the galaxies a German Whisper, which is always a very powerful constraint to fill in digits without many clues. We worked together, using sudokumaker to first find a valid filled grid with the central galaxy obeying German Whisper rules. We found that it was already very constrained and there were not too many solutions. We found one with a shape we particularly liked, and then I think it was me who tried out the arrow constraint to see how they could be used to force the solution we'd found. (It is interesting that in all of our collabs so far, we have set it like this - finding a solution first and then clueing it afterwards. Not all puzzles require this sort of setting, but the sort of things me and Dorlir seem to have gravitated towards together have always needed this method.) I was excited when I placed a few arrows and saw the far-reaching effects they had, using a combination of symmetry and German Whisper logic. It felt like a fresh and fun combination. I think Dorlir's love of minimalism was rubbing off on me! I showed Dorlir some of my initially placed arrows and he loved them, and then I think he just did a bit of tweaking, perhaps adding another couple of arrows or removing some of mine that weren't necessary, and it really honed it into this final puzzle. Very happy with how tight the solve path is on this... we have seen several people solve it now, and it has always been pretty much the exact same way in the same order. It doesn't always turn out like that (some puzzles can be solved in several different ways), but it's pleasing when it does. My favourite deduction is the one with the 67 pair forcing oranges either side of both cells, regardless of which one is the 6. As Dorlir said in his comment, our first collab (Loop Limit) was pretty much exactly a year ago, so I'm happy we are still occasionally working together and this is a nice way to celebrate! Simon, really happy you enjoyed this - we can always trust that you won't resort to bifurcation where other people would. Thankyou for finding and explaining all the logic we intended and liked about the puzzle 💜
Thanks Marty great puzzle from Dorlir and your good self - wondering if the type setter used a "Qwerty" keyboard to put your name in the rules? Look forward to the next puzzle from Morty!
100% agree with Simon's friend. Cracking the cryptic is a brilliant and relaxing way to spend a few hours watching two amazing people solve fantastic puzzles. CtC videos always make a bad day good and a good day great.
I really enjoyed this video was waiting for some day to come to see it this video, and here it did come at perfect time. It is also interesting that somewhere around 1 year ago it was my first collab with marty and it was featured somewhere on October last year and this is a perfect video to come in a circle after a year. It is always great to collab with marty and is fascinating to have such similar ideas and this was no exception. I hope to get more collabs with him since it is always a pleasure. And I hope to see more features in the future here. With that thank you very much for the video and take care.
@dorlirahmeti7576 Your puzzles usually involve quite a lot of maths. Being quite bad at it, I must say I really enjoyed this collaboration and its fruit. Great job you two, and thank you!
You could build ONE galaxy that meets the Ying-Yang rules with a center offset from the center by 1/2 a cell (middle or corner of the center cell). That will make the far side(s) all the other color, which means it can't be a galaxy as that full line will reflect SOMEWHERE as a full line, so it will cut the galaxy in two, making it not a connected galaxy,
This channel and the way Mark and Simon solve is such harmony. Can get me into such a pleasant mood. Simon, your friend had such perfect comments to say to you!
I've been watching this channel for a while now, and have finally got up the courage to try variant sudoku for myself. Nothing as fancy as what Simon can do, but I've done a couple expert level killer puzzles and I feel pretty chuffed with myself! Might try tackling thermos next. Keep up the fantastic work. Sending love from Australia 🤗
Re your friend, I have absolutely used longer CTC videos to test/improve my own attention span by watching the whole thing (without skipping or putting the video on 2x speed!). I don't claim to have ADHD but I do think I've fallen into some bad habits and behaviours that closely match the description of ADHD, and I'm working on retraining my brain out of those. Long-form content that focuses on (more or less) a single task and has minimal editing or jump-cuts is absolutely perfect. You always apologise if you're silent for longer than a few seconds but the value of those silent seconds is immeasurable in terms of setting the overall tone of the video (and it gives us mortals a moment to think and see if we can spot anything too...)
This channel and the puzzle contructors never fail to blow me away. Every week or so we get an amazing new setting that would've been unheard of just a few weeks prior, and we get to witness world-class solving as well.
I agree with your friend, Simon. I know that your voice will be a balm for my nerves and blood pressure at the end of the day. However, I’ve been known to fuss at both you and Mark when you miss something even I caught, or sitting questioning why you did something or did not do something during a solve resulting in my rewinding multiple times to see if I can figure it out. I keep some of your longer solves in a play list to play as my “white noise” as I sleep. I find I sleep so much better when it is playing.
I agree, this channel is incredibly relaxing. I generally cant fall asleep without background noises, usually music or videos. Any cracking the cryptic is like... THE perfect thing. And i love having it run on the side while i do smth else to relax
I watch Simon's videos while I'm eating dinner. They're a very fun and enjoyable way to end my day. With all the junk you can find on the internet, these are a nice daily dose of positivity. 😊
I completely agree with Simon’s friend. I do enjoy the puzzles but even on days like today where the puzzle is very complex and I know I won’t completely understand it all and it will take a few rewatches if certain segments - I still watch every day. Simon always brings a smile to my face and makes my day better even if I don’t completely understand what he’s saying 😂
i feel like simon skipped over centers of rotation that are half way between cells. if you have the center of rotation anywhere that isn't touching r5c5, then the galaxy wont be able to reach at least 2 rows/cols. if however you put it between say r4c5 and r5c5, then it can reach all but the bottom row which seems fine at first glance. what breaks in this case is that that whole bottom row,which is the 2nd color) needs to be rotated to the top somewhere. if the other colors center isn't in r5c5 then you get stripes by the same logic. if it is in r5c5, then the top row is now unavailable to the first color and by symmetry, neither is the 2nd last row which creates 2x2s. the same logic can be used on all other centers between cells (4 corners and 4 sides of r5c5)
Wow - what a puzzle - I was struggling at first but after watching Simon for a couple of minutes tried doing it in his methodical way. It worked and I managed it in about 1:20:00 -Very chuffed with that. Gorgeous puzzle.
I'm just now starting to wonder, how good are the testers if they have to beat these puzzles before they make their way to Mark and Simon? I'd have to assume they're just as great as the two on camera
I worked on this for about 5 minutes before getting nowhere and stepping away. While resting, the epiphany for how to begin sprung up in my head; upon returning (and after one mistake that caused me to backtrack) I was able to finish in a time of 41:09, which doesn't include the time I was resting. Incredible puzzle!
I always found contect creator vs viewer relationship fascinating. We know your favorite expressions, your favorite color, you like golf, we have a glimpse of your life. While on the other end you have no clue at all who most of your viewer. It's a oneway relationship. Glad you will have a sample of the people who are following you.
40 minutes for me. Proud of that one. I was really worried that the basic sudoku was going to be a problem at the end, but thankfully it let up pretty quickly.
+1 to the mail about this channel being soothing. I suffer from daily/continuous migraines and this channel is one of my escapes. the pain gets unbearable quickly when I can't keep myself focused on something else so thinking along with you is extremely helpful.
If only Stratford-upon-Avon were located on the Dutch side of the North Sea... I'd know where I would be going ;-) Mark and Simon, have a great time over there. And for sure, one day, you'll behold a Taylor-Swift-size venue filled with people shouting "Bobbins"!
58:07, took me a bit to see only a single color could be on the perimeter of the grid, then even longer to start placing digits, but I got there in the end.
I finished in 88 minutes. This puzzle was absolutely brilliant. I quite enjoyed the troll at the beginning with the possibility of spirals being offset from the center, only to be forces thanks to the 2x2 rule restricting centers from every other cell besides r5c5 for both. I was confused after that, because I remember doing a different galaxy puzzle where the center had shared galaxy cells. This avoided any shenanigans involving the orthogonal connections. However, I didn't appreciate that for a good amount of time that this puzzle was different. It led to a very funny moment where I realized it and was able to coat the entire edge of the grid in the same color. I think my favorite part was realizing that r5c5 and r2c8 had to have the same parity, which when combined with ruling out a 6 in r2c8 due to it duplicating on the other side, making r4c2 a 6. This breaks because it is a 6 on a German Whisper line, so double 1's would have to exist in the same column. That was so cool to see. The rest was so fun to color. This has to be one of my favorites. "Merty" really made me laugh when I saw that. Great Puzzle!
1:06:50 gives me a 4/5 pair in row 9 , removing 4 from R9 C7. Same cell seconds later looks like this cell can only be 3 or 5 now , looks like I can't resolve it yet. Never change Simon , never change 😊. Brilliant puzzle btw.
At 1:06:56, Simon removes a 4 candidate due to a 4/5 pair - only to immediately add a 5 candidate to the same square. You couldn't possibly make such stuff up... 😂
I for one don't really do or enjoy puzzles all that much and watch the channel consistently enough. A kind gentle voice is needed sometimes, even if it is in a foreign tongue.
Took me about two and a half hours, pretty hard puzzle, though I'm watching a stream at the same time so maybe I could have been faster. Really liked it.
I totally agree with your friend, Simon. This show is a palate cleanser for me after reading and hearing about all the negativity in the world. It helps me relax at the end of the day.
I found it easier to picture what was going on when I realised the second galaxy would be all the negative space left behind in the 9x9 grid once you removed the first galaxy, since every cell has to be in one or the other. It then seemed fairly obvious that they would both be rotationally symmetrical about the centre cell, r5c5. And since r5c5 could only be in one of the galaxies, the other galaxy had to be a ring galaxy, to be orthogonally connected, and would also have to occupy all of the outer perimeter if it wasn't to isolate any cells from the central galaxy.
Made a mistake early on as forgot the rule about other region not blocking vision, but once sorted that out this was much less difficult than I thought it would be. Thanks.
It's so funny to see how truly reluctant to do Sudoku Simon is in the last 10 minutes! I always thought that his jokes about this were just that, jokes. Now I realise that he really doesn't like doing Sudoku!
32:20, but that was after probably 15 minutes just thinking in general about the rules to figure out how you could possibly have two galaxies use all the cells in the grid. Once I figured that, it was relatively smooth sailing applying it to the given clues.
This is one for the history books, that break in logic and then all ghe symmetry, gorgeous 😍 (to watch you solve, my brain gets fried even on approachable one in the app)
→ 20:20 "If [r1c7 is] blue, it's rotational counterpart would be [r9c3]" - This already presupposes that the rotational center of the blue galaxy is in the middle of the grid, which is not quite proven yet. (Ah, Simon notices this too right afterwards.) I also got stuck here, and couldn't see a way you could get anything else than "center is one color and the outer ring is a different color", but I don't think Simon has actually proven it rigorously here - the center of rotation could be offset by half a cell, for example. (This will mess up the symmetry for the orange galaxy, but that argument was not made.) → 51:52 "I thought it was very diffiult for [c4r6] to be a 4" - It is very difficult, if you look at the cell directly above it, which can be easily shown to be a 4 from the existing coloring and arrow. (Noticed a minute later.)
Without trying the puzzle, just reading the rules, im pretty sure that means both galaxies center on r5c5, one of them uses up the entire r1, r9, c1, c9 perimeter; and the other galaxy uses r5c5
One thing I just forgot to mention which I didn't see someone else figure it out is the opening I have with perimeter I think is very interesting and I thought to share it here. We know in any yin-yang there is at least one row or one column on the perimeter that is totally of the same color. We can assume row 1, then since we need to have a galaxy we have that another row is of that same color and hence need to be row 9 otherwise we cut-off the grid. And from here we can easily conclude that entire perimeter is of the same color.
I wonder whether on a toroidal grid we could find more ways of having yin-yang symmetrical galaxies? (Yin-Yang on a Torus doesn't have the border lemma (as there is no border), and also no checkerboard lemma, I think.)
I skipped straight to the rules, took me 2 seconds to see "Merty Sears" and that reminded me of the tortoise and the hare puzzle. Where you should have just called him "Martys Ears".
Because as soon as you add a cell to the right (or below) you’d have to add another cell to the left (or above) neither of which is possible. The only way that would work is if the galaxy was 1 cell big.
I agree that this rule is unnecessarily complicated. The center of rotation can never be any other place besides the central digit. Or to add more confusion you could hypothetically put it halfway between that box and an adjacent cell because you would know the information about the edges and therefore could deduce the colors off the grid in the other…but that would have been extremely gimmicky, for me anyway. I can’t think of an example of this sort of logic ever being used before. Which I guess means it’s “novel”. But for me, it’s…just…unfulfilling somehow.
The only early realization I can make about this puzzle is that whichever galaxy is the German whisper one, all the 5's are in the other galaxy. That's... about as far as my skills will take me here lmao
Which is also the first thought I had. But you can build a lot more on it. Since all fives must be in the same galaxy, you need to pick up at least one cell in columns 1/9 and rows 1/9. As you need to have rotational symmetry, that places the center of rotation in the center of the grid. Also because of the perimeter rule of yin yang and the fact you need to preserve rotational symmetry, you cannot have any part of the perimeter belong to another galaxy. You would either have too many changes of colors or break symmetry. Therefore the perimeter all belong to a single galaxy and is the german whisper one. Finally, as the outer galaxy is going to "drill" into the middle of the grid to reach all fives of the puzzle, the other one is gonna get defined by whatever cells are not being picked up. That pattern being symmetrical will lead to the inner galaxy being also symmetrical around the same center point.
@@bastien.clementthis is such a clean way to break into the puzzle. I didn't feel Simon's argument for galaxies being centered on the puzzle to be nearly as complete.
@@bastien.clement It's all an education for me, I'm relatively new at looking at these more advanced sudoku, but it's fun to stretch my brain and try to play along.
Around minute 52 Simon actually DID prove that R6C4 could not be blue... If it is blue, it's a 4, placing 9 in R6C5 - now how do you connect two blues in bottom left to the line? A blue in R6C3 would put a second 9 in R6 and going underneath would put yet another blue in C4 which would increase the value in R6C4 to 5...
I think when he was thinking about what colour the center cell was and how that affected the Yin Yang logic he looked at if it was not the center and I think he proved that if it wasn’t then it would create 2 by 2 issues with the other colour elsewhere in the grid due to the symmetry. That was my understanding at least. But my brain is not as logical as Simons or others commenters 🤷♂️.
I didn't even realise this was something that required proving. It just seemed clear to me. The two galaxies fill the entire grid. The negative space of one of the symmetrical galaxies forms the other galaxy, and that also has to be rotationally symmetrical. If one of the grids wasn't symmetrical about the centre, how could the space left behind, when you remove it from the 9x9 grid, then be symmetrical?
You can email one per month to cracking the cryptic - the email address can be found on their website. Sudoku Maker is the best tool to actually build them
After reading the rules and trying it out a bit: This seems completely impossible. Yin-Yang plus rotational symmetry seems to be a quite big constraint (as I don't see a torus-rule), with only one class of solutions I can see, and this is contradicting to what the arrows in r4c5 are saying. (Giving up after ~ 20 minutes, let's see where my mistake is.)
After that, I still struggled a lot, but finally got some progress. But after ~ 229 minutes I got three cells with just 79 as options in the middle column 😞 Giving up now.
At 58:12 of the video, I saw where it diverged. Seems like I made a wrong conclusion here, and rolled back to that point. Got it wrong again, but finally managed to solve it. 297:29 total, solve counter 1282.
Was there said anywhere that the center of the rotation must actually be a cell? I mean: couldn't a galaxy have a size (or both sizes, height and width) even?
The way I thought about it, since every cell is in one or the other of the two galaxies, the "negative space" left behind by removing one of the galaxies must form the other galaxy. If one of the galaxies isn't centred on r5c5, then the negative space (the other galaxy) cannot then be rotationally symmetrical. (The negative space will have the same centre of rotational symmetry as the first galaxy, but its symmetry will be broken when you add the remainder of the 9x9 grid to it.)
@@RichSmith77 ignoring the 2x2 rule for the sake of argument, a counterexample of this hypothesis would be one galaxy consisting of rows 1-5, and the other galaxy consisting of rows 6-9. Both shapes would be rotationally symmetric, yet they do not share the same center of rotation. The 2x2 rule forces the centers closer together, but I don't think it's axiomatically true to state that both centers need to be r5c5
@@sagov9That's true. I guess when I'm picturing the first galaxy, I'm not ignoring the 2x2 rule, which means I immediately see it as some kind of branching tree structure that has to reach the outer two rows/columns along every edge. If galaxy 1's centre (say blue) isn't in the centre of the grid, then there has to be at least one edge that's entirely the other galaxy (say orange, say row 9). If that gets rotated to anywhere other than the row 1, then you have a band of orange cutting across the whole grid that necessitates 2x2's of orange, since you cannot have blue on both sides of that band. And if the orange row 9 does rotate to row 1 of the grid, then the blue galaxy doesn't reach row 1, and by rotation, blue will not reach row 8. So rows 8 and 9 will all be orange, creating 2x2s of orange. I feel I grasped this intuitively, but you compelled me to think about it more rigorously. Thank you. 🙂 Edit: I guess to be completist, I also have to consider the situation where the orange bottom row rotates onto itself, and is the entirety of the orange galaxy. Then the other eight rows will all be blue, and break the 2x2 of blue. (Man, being rigorous can be hard 😂).
@@RichSmith77 Yeah I did consider this point as well, which is exactly what convinced me that the centers in this puzzle did have to coincide in r5c5 when I solved it.
Hello, Merty here :)
Wooo it was brilliant to see this featured, as myself and Dorlir made this several months ago and were very proud of this one. It is always a fun experience collabing with Dorlir - as he mentioned in his comments. We do both have quite distinct styles (he's more likely to focus on minimalism and economy of clues, and I quite often will enjoy putting themes and aesthetics in mine, and sometimes even extra clues if I feel they make it more fun, perhaps at the expense of elegant minimalism), but even despite that, we in fact have a very similar approach to setting and especially the kinds of logic and deductions that please us. Dorlir's puzzles are naturally sometimes more mathsy and brutal than mine, but he also has a big passion for geometry style puzzles, yin-yang, loops, snakes etc, and it's here where we overlap a lot.
Dorlir is one of the most creative and innovative minds in the sudoku world right now. While his grids aren't usually very showy or flashy at first glance, they are always packed with so much cool intricate genius logic, and usually based around a new and clever logical core concept. It seems like several times a week he's telling me about a new idea he's had for a puzzle, and they're always different and fresh.
One day back in March, Dorlir mentioned a core idea to me... the idea of two galaxies, combined with yin yang, and he showed me the opening deduction that would be forced - with the perimeter all one colour, and the inner corners and the middle cell coloured the other colour. I thought this was a brilliant opening, and from there we talked about what clues and rules we could have that could satisfyingly fill the grid.
I think it was Dorlir's idea to make one of the galaxies a German Whisper, which is always a very powerful constraint to fill in digits without many clues. We worked together, using sudokumaker to first find a valid filled grid with the central galaxy obeying German Whisper rules. We found that it was already very constrained and there were not too many solutions. We found one with a shape we particularly liked, and then I think it was me who tried out the arrow constraint to see how they could be used to force the solution we'd found. (It is interesting that in all of our collabs so far, we have set it like this - finding a solution first and then clueing it afterwards. Not all puzzles require this sort of setting, but the sort of things me and Dorlir seem to have gravitated towards together have always needed this method.)
I was excited when I placed a few arrows and saw the far-reaching effects they had, using a combination of symmetry and German Whisper logic. It felt like a fresh and fun combination. I think Dorlir's love of minimalism was rubbing off on me! I showed Dorlir some of my initially placed arrows and he loved them, and then I think he just did a bit of tweaking, perhaps adding another couple of arrows or removing some of mine that weren't necessary, and it really honed it into this final puzzle. Very happy with how tight the solve path is on this... we have seen several people solve it now, and it has always been pretty much the exact same way in the same order. It doesn't always turn out like that (some puzzles can be solved in several different ways), but it's pleasing when it does.
My favourite deduction is the one with the 67 pair forcing oranges either side of both cells, regardless of which one is the 6.
As Dorlir said in his comment, our first collab (Loop Limit) was pretty much exactly a year ago, so I'm happy we are still occasionally working together and this is a nice way to celebrate!
Simon, really happy you enjoyed this - we can always trust that you won't resort to bifurcation where other people would. Thankyou for finding and explaining all the logic we intended and liked about the puzzle 💜
That is a lovely comment and thank you for the compliments. I really enjoy working with you! Can't wait to see what we come up next!
Thanks Marty great puzzle from Dorlir and your good self - wondering if the type setter used a "Qwerty" keyboard to put your name in the rules? Look forward to the next puzzle from Morty!
@@dorlirahmeti7576just fabulous from you 2!! Your brains are amazing!!!
Absolutely fabulous from you 2!! Thank you for all your insights above about it!!!
Wonderful puzzle! 👏👏
100% agree with Simon's friend. Cracking the cryptic is a brilliant and relaxing way to spend a few hours watching two amazing people solve fantastic puzzles. CtC videos always make a bad day good and a good day great.
I really enjoyed this video was waiting for some day to come to see it this video, and here it did come at perfect time. It is also interesting that somewhere around 1 year ago it was my first collab with marty and it was featured somewhere on October last year and this is a perfect video to come in a circle after a year. It is always great to collab with marty and is fascinating to have such similar ideas and this was no exception. I hope to get more collabs with him since it is always a pleasure. And I hope to see more features in the future here. With that thank you very much for the video and take care.
💜 I'm sure there will be more mate - was a blast making this with you
@dorlirahmeti7576 Your puzzles usually involve quite a lot of maths. Being quite bad at it, I must say I really enjoyed this collaboration and its fruit. Great job you two, and thank you!
Wonderful puzzle! 👏👏
You could build ONE galaxy that meets the Ying-Yang rules with a center offset from the center by 1/2 a cell (middle or corner of the center cell). That will make the far side(s) all the other color, which means it can't be a galaxy as that full line will reflect SOMEWHERE as a full line, so it will cut the galaxy in two, making it not a connected galaxy,
This channel and the way Mark and Simon solve is such harmony. Can get me into such a pleasant mood.
Simon, your friend had such perfect comments to say to you!
I've been watching this channel for a while now, and have finally got up the courage to try variant sudoku for myself. Nothing as fancy as what Simon can do, but I've done a couple expert level killer puzzles and I feel pretty chuffed with myself! Might try tackling thermos next. Keep up the fantastic work. Sending love from Australia 🤗
Re your friend, I have absolutely used longer CTC videos to test/improve my own attention span by watching the whole thing (without skipping or putting the video on 2x speed!). I don't claim to have ADHD but I do think I've fallen into some bad habits and behaviours that closely match the description of ADHD, and I'm working on retraining my brain out of those. Long-form content that focuses on (more or less) a single task and has minimal editing or jump-cuts is absolutely perfect. You always apologise if you're silent for longer than a few seconds but the value of those silent seconds is immeasurable in terms of setting the overall tone of the video (and it gives us mortals a moment to think and see if we can spot anything too...)
This channel and the puzzle contructors never fail to blow me away. Every week or so we get an amazing new setting that would've been unheard of just a few weeks prior, and we get to witness world-class solving as well.
I agree with your friend, Simon. I know that your voice will be a balm for my nerves and blood pressure at the end of the day. However, I’ve been known to fuss at both you and Mark when you miss something even I caught, or sitting questioning why you did something or did not do something during a solve resulting in my rewinding multiple times to see if I can figure it out.
I keep some of your longer solves in a play list to play as my “white noise” as I sleep. I find I sleep so much better when it is playing.
I agree, this channel is incredibly relaxing. I generally cant fall asleep without background noises, usually music or videos. Any cracking the cryptic is like... THE perfect thing. And i love having it run on the side while i do smth else to relax
I watch Simon's videos while I'm eating dinner. They're a very fun and enjoyable way to end my day. With all the junk you can find on the internet, these are a nice daily dose of positivity. 😊
I completely agree with Simon’s friend. I do enjoy the puzzles but even on days like today where the puzzle is very complex and I know I won’t completely understand it all and it will take a few rewatches if certain segments - I still watch every day. Simon always brings a smile to my face and makes my day better even if I don’t completely understand what he’s saying 😂
i feel like simon skipped over centers of rotation that are half way between cells. if you have the center of rotation anywhere that isn't touching r5c5, then the galaxy wont be able to reach at least 2 rows/cols. if however you put it between say r4c5 and r5c5, then it can reach all but the bottom row which seems fine at first glance. what breaks in this case is that that whole bottom row,which is the 2nd color) needs to be rotated to the top somewhere. if the other colors center isn't in r5c5 then you get stripes by the same logic. if it is in r5c5, then the top row is now unavailable to the first color and by symmetry, neither is the 2nd last row which creates 2x2s. the same logic can be used on all other centers between cells (4 corners and 4 sides of r5c5)
Wow - what a puzzle - I was struggling at first but after watching Simon for a couple of minutes tried doing it in his methodical way. It worked and I managed it in about 1:20:00 -Very chuffed with that. Gorgeous puzzle.
What a delightful way to work my way into my Saturday morning by watching this solve. This puzzle was stupendous.
30:41 for me. OMG what a puzzle!! I can't even believe it's solvable, let alone this enjoyable. What a masterpiece!
I'm just now starting to wonder, how good are the testers if they have to beat these puzzles before they make their way to Mark and Simon? I'd have to assume they're just as great as the two on camera
I worked on this for about 5 minutes before getting nowhere and stepping away. While resting, the epiphany for how to begin sprung up in my head; upon returning (and after one mistake that caused me to backtrack) I was able to finish in a time of 41:09, which doesn't include the time I was resting.
Incredible puzzle!
I always found contect creator vs viewer relationship fascinating. We know your favorite expressions, your favorite color, you like golf, we have a glimpse of your life. While on the other end you have no clue at all who most of your viewer. It's a oneway relationship. Glad you will have a sample of the people who are following you.
40 minutes for me. Proud of that one.
I was really worried that the basic sudoku was going to be a problem at the end, but thankfully it let up pretty quickly.
+1 to the mail about this channel being soothing. I suffer from daily/continuous migraines and this channel is one of my escapes. the pain gets unbearable quickly when I can't keep myself focused on something else so thinking along with you is extremely helpful.
I am so glad that I found your channel. There is nothing more relaxing in the evening ❤
Driven to distraction trying to solve the puzzle whilst simultaneously constantly reassessing to check I'm not inadvertently drawing a swastika.
we did our best to choose one of the possible solutions that didn't look like one 😅
If only Stratford-upon-Avon were located on the Dutch side of the North Sea... I'd know where I would be going ;-)
Mark and Simon, have a great time over there. And for sure, one day, you'll behold a Taylor-Swift-size venue filled with people shouting "Bobbins"!
I love this image and can absolutely image it happening. ❤
58:07, took me a bit to see only a single color could be on the perimeter of the grid, then even longer to start placing digits, but I got there in the end.
Only on this channel you can get phrases like: “so it’s Harry Styled if it was a 4”. I love Simon so much!
I finished in 88 minutes. This puzzle was absolutely brilliant. I quite enjoyed the troll at the beginning with the possibility of spirals being offset from the center, only to be forces thanks to the 2x2 rule restricting centers from every other cell besides r5c5 for both. I was confused after that, because I remember doing a different galaxy puzzle where the center had shared galaxy cells. This avoided any shenanigans involving the orthogonal connections. However, I didn't appreciate that for a good amount of time that this puzzle was different. It led to a very funny moment where I realized it and was able to coat the entire edge of the grid in the same color. I think my favorite part was realizing that r5c5 and r2c8 had to have the same parity, which when combined with ruling out a 6 in r2c8 due to it duplicating on the other side, making r4c2 a 6. This breaks because it is a 6 on a German Whisper line, so double 1's would have to exist in the same column. That was so cool to see. The rest was so fun to color. This has to be one of my favorites. "Merty" really made me laugh when I saw that. Great Puzzle!
Simon, you have a pretty smart friend.....We all need smart friends like that!
when you are used to shorts, there are some value in longer content. also the fact that you have to pay attentions for a long time, is great training.
1:06:50 gives me a 4/5 pair in row 9 , removing 4 from R9 C7.
Same cell seconds later looks like this cell can only be 3 or 5 now , looks like I can't resolve it yet.
Never change Simon , never change 😊.
Brilliant puzzle btw.
At 1:06:56, Simon removes a 4 candidate due to a 4/5 pair - only to immediately add a 5 candidate to the same square.
You couldn't possibly make such stuff up... 😂
I for one don't really do or enjoy puzzles all that much and watch the channel consistently enough. A kind gentle voice is needed sometimes, even if it is in a foreign tongue.
Took me about two and a half hours, pretty hard puzzle, though I'm watching a stream at the same time so maybe I could have been faster. Really liked it.
I totally agree with your friend, Simon. This show is a palate cleanser for me after reading and hearing about all the negativity in the world. It helps me relax at the end of the day.
I found it easier to picture what was going on when I realised the second galaxy would be all the negative space left behind in the 9x9 grid once you removed the first galaxy, since every cell has to be in one or the other. It then seemed fairly obvious that they would both be rotationally symmetrical about the centre cell, r5c5. And since r5c5 could only be in one of the galaxies, the other galaxy had to be a ring galaxy, to be orthogonally connected, and would also have to occupy all of the outer perimeter if it wasn't to isolate any cells from the central galaxy.
What a brilliant puzzle.
Normal brains: *enjoy classic sudoku*
Enlightened brains: *also enjoy variant sudoku*
Galaxy brains: *collide*
I finally conquered this one after two hours of climbing quicksand. Amazing puzzle.
Made a mistake early on as forgot the rule about other region not blocking vision, but once sorted that out this was much less difficult than I thought it would be. Thanks.
The very first thing that occurs to me is pretty sure one of the galaxies must take the entire perimeter...
It's so funny to see how truly reluctant to do Sudoku Simon is in the last 10 minutes! I always thought that his jokes about this were just that, jokes. Now I realise that he really doesn't like doing Sudoku!
32:20, but that was after probably 15 minutes just thinking in general about the rules to figure out how you could possibly have two galaxies use all the cells in the grid. Once I figured that, it was relatively smooth sailing applying it to the given clues.
This is one for the history books, that break in logic and then all ghe symmetry, gorgeous 😍 (to watch you solve, my brain gets fried even on approachable one in the app)
Of course Simon WON'T use green to indicate the German Whisper galaxy.
→ 20:20 "If [r1c7 is] blue, it's rotational counterpart would be [r9c3]" - This already presupposes that the rotational center of the blue galaxy is in the middle of the grid, which is not quite proven yet. (Ah, Simon notices this too right afterwards.) I also got stuck here, and couldn't see a way you could get anything else than "center is one color and the outer ring is a different color", but I don't think Simon has actually proven it rigorously here - the center of rotation could be offset by half a cell, for example. (This will mess up the symmetry for the orange galaxy, but that argument was not made.)
→ 51:52 "I thought it was very diffiult for [c4r6] to be a 4" - It is very difficult, if you look at the cell directly above it, which can be easily shown to be a 4 from the existing coloring and arrow. (Noticed a minute later.)
Merty Sears 😅😂
Just saw that too lol
I might have to do a collab with Merty, this puzzle was pretty cool
@@martysearsIs he a brother? That's one smart family. 🙂
Merty Sears is an anagram of "Smarter? Yes!" :-)
Whereas Marty Sears is an anagram of "A Martyress"...
Without trying the puzzle, just reading the rules, im pretty sure that means both galaxies center on r5c5, one of them uses up the entire r1, r9, c1, c9 perimeter; and the other galaxy uses r5c5
Doing the first actual sudoku after 1 hour and 6 minutes in a sudoku, how outrageous
I loved this puzzle! Still took me 53:46, but just lovely! 😄
Cool and clever puzzle this
46:10 for me. Luckily, I've played many of these that have the 2x2 restriction.
Dorlir and Marty ....yikes...and wow 😁...think this might be out of my jurisdiction to attempt. 😉
Wonderfully clever setting from @martysears and @dorlir. Beautiful logic throughout! Great video Simon!
One thing I just forgot to mention which I didn't see someone else figure it out is the opening I have with perimeter I think is very interesting and I thought to share it here. We know in any yin-yang there is at least one row or one column on the perimeter that is totally of the same color. We can assume row 1, then since we need to have a galaxy we have that another row is of that same color and hence need to be row 9 otherwise we cut-off the grid. And from here we can easily conclude that entire perimeter is of the same color.
A little like you and Mark with CTC Simon!
I wonder whether on a toroidal grid we could find more ways of having yin-yang symmetrical galaxies? (Yin-Yang on a Torus doesn't have the border lemma (as there is no border), and also no checkerboard lemma, I think.)
I skipped straight to the rules, took me 2 seconds to see "Merty Sears" and that reminded me of the tortoise and the hare puzzle. Where you should have just called him "Martys Ears".
The galaxy spells CtC!
never noticed that hahaha
51:51 You were there: the orange arrow should put a 4 in the box.
also if he "extends down" to escape with a 9, the cell would then be seeing a 5th blue.
absolutely brialliant
Another fun puzzle kind of but not terribly hard. Only disappointed to not get a 3 in the corner 😢
I did not expect One Direction-jokes from Simon.
Simon, I might be wrong because I don't fully understand the rules, but why can't the centre of the galicy be in box 1 square 1, for example.
Because as soon as you add a cell to the right (or below) you’d have to add another cell to the left (or above) neither of which is possible. The only way that would work is if the galaxy was 1 cell big.
I agree that this rule is unnecessarily complicated. The center of rotation can never be any other place besides the central digit. Or to add more confusion you could hypothetically put it halfway between that box and an adjacent cell because you would know the information about the edges and therefore could deduce the colors off the grid in the other…but that would have been extremely gimmicky, for me anyway.
I can’t think of an example of this sort of logic ever being used before. Which I guess means it’s “novel”. But for me, it’s…just…unfulfilling somehow.
The only early realization I can make about this puzzle is that whichever galaxy is the German whisper one, all the 5's are in the other galaxy. That's... about as far as my skills will take me here lmao
Which is also the first thought I had. But you can build a lot more on it.
Since all fives must be in the same galaxy, you need to pick up at least one cell in columns 1/9 and rows 1/9. As you need to have rotational symmetry, that places the center of rotation in the center of the grid.
Also because of the perimeter rule of yin yang and the fact you need to preserve rotational symmetry, you cannot have any part of the perimeter belong to another galaxy. You would either have too many changes of colors or break symmetry. Therefore the perimeter all belong to a single galaxy and is the german whisper one.
Finally, as the outer galaxy is going to "drill" into the middle of the grid to reach all fives of the puzzle, the other one is gonna get defined by whatever cells are not being picked up. That pattern being symmetrical will lead to the inner galaxy being also symmetrical around the same center point.
@@bastien.clementthis is such a clean way to break into the puzzle. I didn't feel Simon's argument for galaxies being centered on the puzzle to be nearly as complete.
@@bastien.clement It's all an education for me, I'm relatively new at looking at these more advanced sudoku, but it's fun to stretch my brain and try to play along.
@@bastien.clement "Therefore the perimeter all belong to a single galaxy and is the german whisper one." But orange is not the german whisper galaxy?
35:49 Monogamayhem!
Around minute 52 Simon actually DID prove that R6C4 could not be blue... If it is blue, it's a 4, placing 9 in R6C5 - now how do you connect two blues in bottom left to the line? A blue in R6C3 would put a second 9 in R6 and going underneath would put yet another blue in C4 which would increase the value in R6C4 to 5...
If one galaxy envelops another...is it considered 2 galaxies??
Did Simon consider that the point of symmetry might not be the centre of a cell, but instead on an edge or corner (of the central cell most likely)?
I dont think so. I was also wondering this.
I think when he was thinking about what colour the center cell was and how that affected the Yin Yang logic he looked at if it was not the center and I think he proved that if it wasn’t then it would create 2 by 2 issues with the other colour elsewhere in the grid due to the symmetry. That was my understanding at least. But my brain is not as logical as Simons or others commenters 🤷♂️.
Was also thinking about that, think it could only be a corner of the central square at most, but that's still 4 other potential points to consider
He actually proved all the cases if you check it out the video till 26:40 when it colors entire perimeter.
I didn't even realise this was something that required proving. It just seemed clear to me. The two galaxies fill the entire grid. The negative space of one of the symmetrical galaxies forms the other galaxy, and that also has to be rotationally symmetrical. If one of the grids wasn't symmetrical about the centre, how could the space left behind, when you remove it from the 9x9 grid, then be symmetrical?
Hi everyone, does anyone know how to submit my own puzzles? Thanks!
You can email one per month to cracking the cryptic - the email address can be found on their website. Sudoku Maker is the best tool to actually build them
After reading the rules and trying it out a bit: This seems completely impossible. Yin-Yang plus rotational symmetry seems to be a quite big constraint (as I don't see a torus-rule), with only one class of solutions I can see, and this is contradicting to what the arrows in r4c5 are saying. (Giving up after ~ 20 minutes, let's see where my mistake is.)
Aha, I read the arow rule wrong: It counts the sum of all the arrows, not every arrow counting the same thing.
After that, I still struggled a lot, but finally got some progress. But after ~ 229 minutes I got three cells with just 79 as options in the middle column 😞
Giving up now.
At 58:12 of the video, I saw where it diverged. Seems like I made a wrong conclusion here, and rolled back to that point. Got it wrong again, but finally managed to solve it. 297:29 total, solve counter 1282.
Was there said anywhere that the center of the rotation must actually be a cell? I mean: couldn't a galaxy have a size (or both sizes, height and width) even?
The way I thought about it, since every cell is in one or the other of the two galaxies, the "negative space" left behind by removing one of the galaxies must form the other galaxy. If one of the galaxies isn't centred on r5c5, then the negative space (the other galaxy) cannot then be rotationally symmetrical. (The negative space will have the same centre of rotational symmetry as the first galaxy, but its symmetry will be broken when you add the remainder of the 9x9 grid to it.)
@@RichSmith77 ignoring the 2x2 rule for the sake of argument, a counterexample of this hypothesis would be one galaxy consisting of rows 1-5, and the other galaxy consisting of rows 6-9. Both shapes would be rotationally symmetric, yet they do not share the same center of rotation. The 2x2 rule forces the centers closer together, but I don't think it's axiomatically true to state that both centers need to be r5c5
@@sagov9That's true.
I guess when I'm picturing the first galaxy, I'm not ignoring the 2x2 rule, which means I immediately see it as some kind of branching tree structure that has to reach the outer two rows/columns along every edge.
If galaxy 1's centre (say blue) isn't in the centre of the grid, then there has to be at least one edge that's entirely the other galaxy (say orange, say row 9). If that gets rotated to anywhere other than the row 1, then you have a band of orange cutting across the whole grid that necessitates 2x2's of orange, since you cannot have blue on both sides of that band. And if the orange row 9 does rotate to row 1 of the grid, then the blue galaxy doesn't reach row 1, and by rotation, blue will not reach row 8. So rows 8 and 9 will all be orange, creating 2x2s of orange.
I feel I grasped this intuitively, but you compelled me to think about it more rigorously. Thank you. 🙂
Edit: I guess to be completist, I also have to consider the situation where the orange bottom row rotates onto itself, and is the entirety of the orange galaxy. Then the other eight rows will all be blue, and break the 2x2 of blue. (Man, being rigorous can be hard 😂).
@@RichSmith77 Yeah I did consider this point as well, which is exactly what convinced me that the centers in this puzzle did have to coincide in r5c5 when I solved it.
35:42 wouldn't that just be a monogamy problem?
At very first look, this reminds me of the monstrous Jay Dyer puzzle with the weird 15 cages...
Do you remember the name?
ua-cam.com/video/KJZlrqKGMb8/v-deo.htmlsi=-a7OSs8lcAJbFfxa The name is Crux. @@cherriespancakes
@@cherriespancakesCrux
Please, go back to puzzles with simpler rules! It's almost a week with puzzles with tons of rules